


The Erased One

by ladyheroines



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Ancient Elves (Dragon Age), Angst, Arlathan, Arlathan interpretation, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-05-31 12:36:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6470200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyheroines/pseuds/ladyheroines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Calin’sahn was supposed to be a lieutenant to Elgar’nan. Instead she became the first traitor to the gods – and the one they never let be known. Though she was forgotten her name lived on in elvish forever, for what she had done ensured that Calin’sahn came to mean the theft of the soul.<br/>(This is a story from an outside perspective about the war that earned the Evanuris their titles and explores both the fragments of what we know and my headcanons about the truth behind the folkstories, magic, and the gods’ foci. It follows an OC in the time of Arlathan. See the notes at the beginning and the end for more.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ma’sahn uth-an

**Author's Note:**

> I have a headcanon that the foci contain their owner’s souls in a way. It explains what Solas said about no one but himself being able to bear the anchor; if the anchor was just magic any of the gods should have been powerful enough to bear it. I also found the revelation that Falon’din and Dirthamen were “twin souls” rather than actual twins very interesting. I decided to write something exploring this a bit, as well as tie in other things like the banishment (and existence) of the Forgotten Ones and so forth. This is basically a fic trying to tie together the events that took place back then and what we know about the time before the Veil. Explanation of the elvish used at the end of each chapter.  
> I also should note that I headcanon an “age” to be a measurement of time for the Elvhen like a century is for us. I also headcanon it is called such because at the end of your first age you would have been considered an adult in Arlathan culture.
> 
> Thank you to leviathaninfinitum on tumblr for beta-ing!

Calin’sahn was supposed to be a lieutenant to Elgar’nan. She was supposed to use the centuries of training she had in turning the arcane to physical weapons crafted of fire, lighting, and will to fight against the tide in the Great War that was just cresting over history – not yet earned the title the newly-named gods would give it an age later. She had trained for years herself and perfected the art of dirth’ena enasalin under the tutelage of Elgar’nan’s himself – the man a warrior but not yet revered so that such training would be beneath him. She had pledged herself to him in return for the training and her place by his side as a guard.

Instead, she became the first traitor to gods – and the one they never let be known.

The war was not what anyone expected.

There is a reason that those they fought against would in the ages to come only be known as The Forgotten Ones – the war was so gruesome the destruction they wrought then led to her only wishing to call them the Forgotten ones now, though the memories were from ages before that title befell them. Their powers were strong and their armies innumerable. Few survived the battlefield, and even fewer the war. Those who came in contact with them were all but wiped out. Little was known – about them, or anything else – but the taste of death and destruction. The unappointed-Evanuris stood no chance with their quickly diminishing armies. The _People_ stood no chance as every settlement and civilian was swallowed in the Forgotten Ones’ imposing darkness, leaving behind nothing and no one. As they pressed forward, a void stretched behind them. The Evanuris knew things would only change if their attacks did. Their armies were not so easily transformed and reimagined, but their own attacks and their strategies could be.

That was when Dirthamen created the first foci. Though he created the first one and managed to pour a measure of power into it, the others descended upon his success with a fervor. Together, they created the nine improved foci they all would come to use for their remaining ages – for the most part.

Calin’sahn was called to be present for a ritual for these foci. The generals had been pouring their magic into them for months, drowning themselves in the lyrium they could gain access to before pushing on again to fuel the small orbs. Blood magic did them no good here; they needed _more_ magic, not stronger magic. Though the foci they held now had less than any recognizable fraction of the power they would hold at the fall of the elvhen empire, now they held enough to be promising. Months’ worth of magic, released in a single moment from nine powerful mages? That would be enough to turn the tide of a battle – later, it would be enough to turn the tide of the war.

For now, however, the war was nothing but blackness and hate.

 _Calin’sahn_ : finding meaning. To have found meaning in one’s life. She had hoped to live up to her name in the war crashing down upon her people. Instead, she had expent every ounce of her soul into a battle she did not believe in, did not understand, and was too weary too look upon much longer.

The ritual was dangerous. The focis held the magic of each of their masters, but they were only a storage place as of yet. Dirthamen’s was the only one different, for he had cracked the ritual to make the foci an extension of the soul. Not to tear oneself apart in two, but to extend oneself into the object like a new limb. Now, he presided as an instructor over the other eight generals as they each began the process themselves. Once it was done, they would have no need to pour all their magic and power into the orbs, leaving them unable to walk or think with clarity. Now the foci would build power on their own like their masters’ did, and that power would be just as if it had come from their beating hearts. They would have two selves in magic, one of flesh and one of stone. With this ritual the foci would become more, become _Ma’sahn uth-an_. With these _places that hold one’s meaning,_ these weapons, they could win the war.

Each of the generals brought a lieutenant to oversee their safety through the process. Though Calin’sahn was not the closest to Elgar’nan she was the most trusted that could be spared to ensure his safety. So she stood at his side, a soul not as strong, not quite a dreamer, but damn close, to ensure he survived the ordeal that was regrowing one’s soul.

The ritual for all of them began at the same time – it would take too long an amount of time for each of the generals to be spared in turn. The war would not wait and both them and their weapons were needed. It was a risk they had to take and it showed.

The ritual took place without a hitch for Elgar’nan. He sat at the beginning, eyes closed and foci before him as he began to concentrate, and not once did he move out of place. For Falon’din and June, there were complications. Complications that caught everybody in the rooms’ attention. Dirthamen and his attendants scurried between the two that suffered, their personal lieutenants doing everything they could to ease the process. Most of the other generals at least had difficulty – though suffered no unforeseen complication –  and their lieutenants both helped them through and watched them closely in fear that they would begin convulsing as June did, or writhing like Falon’din.

Across the room, Calin’sahn heard Dirthamen say to his lieutenant, in hushed tones, “His soul is too weak to survive in such a fragment,” as he laid a blanket of his own magic over Falon’din and his foci, guarding his essence so it could grow large enough to survive. Calin’sahn found herself hardly concerned. What was a few more deaths in the face of the staggering numbers this war had consumed? What made these people truly more important than the individuals they sent to the death in their name, claiming a chance at victory and returning nothing, not even bodies?

Dreamers were nobility in the world they had known before the war. Calin’sahn had been a dreamer of the least degree, and as such they had spat on her as she had tried to climb to tier of society where survival had not been a daily gamble. She knew the way of the powerful – the dreamers like the elves standing before her – and she had learned early in her years how the lives of those below their station hardly existed to them. It was why she had turned to honing her skills, seeking the physical arts that the Dreamers so often spat upon.

Ghilan’him banal’vhen they often called the art of warriors of the arcane like herself. The path that leads astray. For fire was somehow lesser when held in the shape of a sword. While the generals around her had learned better – had to, if they were too command in this war – she knew they were still dreamers of the same heritage as the others. She knew lives of people like her _weren’t_ lives to people like them.

And there were so few lives of people like her left. The war had claimed so much, _so many_. And while for ages she had believed in Elgar’nan, trained under him, the war had twisted them both, as well as their memories. Words that had once seemed warm now held hidden jabs in her heart, and the kindness she had been willing to extend in a few exceptions was running dry. The lives of the elevated in society were filled with the ghosts of the commoners who had been lost in battles around her.

She stood there for days at Elgar’nan’s side, nothing to distract her from her thoughts as the other lieutenants were too engrossed with watching or assisting their generals and the attendants meant to assist all of them scurried around June, Falon’din leveling out to safety as he curled around his orb in Dirthamen’s shield. Dirthamen himself was too absorbed in threading his magic in Falon’din’s to be any more aware than the others in the room.

The thought that sealed so many fates came into her head as she watched Mythal’s attendant place her hand on the woman’s shoulder and close her eyes in concentration. She had almost as little work to do as Calin’sahn, but she was dedicated to checking the foci and its progress regularly. She hung on her general’s every order and word, had given her trust of her very life to the woman. Calin’sahn could see the appeal – to give up free thought of what was to be done and what was right was also to give up much confliction and inner agony. She could not follow the woman’s example, however, and just the fact that the woman had done so in the first place was all the evidence she needed that the generals were not truly different from the rest of the dreamers. No one gave themselves away easily – no one did so without encouragement of some kind. Many in the armies had done so to their generals. Calin’sahn could not.

The thought that sealed so many fates was not explicitly worded in her head for days more after that. The situation hardly changed, though both June and Falon’din were more secure. The attendants still sat at June’s side and helped, though now it was less needed. It was lucky, because their powers were greatly weakened by the expenditure. Dirthamen and Falon’din’s situation was similar – all the generals were unaware of the world around them while they worked, and Dirthamen’s exhaustion meant he focused on little else but his tenuous thread through Falon’din’s meaning – his soul.

No one was watching, her feet ached from a week of standing, and she wondered if anyone would notice if she sat. That thought gave rise to the true beginning of betrayal: would anyone notice if she left?

If she just walked out from this room where magic thrummed through her skin like blood. This room where dreamers sat in positions raised far above those of all others. This room that only existed because the sacrifice of thousands _like her_ had not been enough. The dreamers, for all their boasting, had not been enough.

She did not want to witness any more destruction. If these keepers of the soul, these Ma’sahn uth-an, did not turn the tide then there would be nothing but destruction anyway. If they did, the contribution of someone like her could do nothing more than act as a living wall between herself and the generals, the dreamers, whose lives were valued at such higher a price than her own.

They did not deserve her sacrifice. They did not deserve her life.

So she left. But as she slipped back into the shadows, pulled the loose magic permeating the air to hide herself in only a faint shimmer from those too distracted to notice the blank spot in their vision, she walked around the circumference of the room. The door was directly behind Dirthamen’s chair – a carving coming from the floor she could only see as a throne now – as he was meant to be the only one aware enough to notice the intrusion of an unwelcome guest during the ritual. On the right arm of his chair a half circle was carved, his foci nestled inside. It had power inside, only a tiny fragment of his soul there. Small enough from the short length of time he had been able to sacrifice to create it that it was hardly a true _Ma’sahn uth-an_. His soul truly only rested within his own ribs. Once the ritual was properly underway he was meant to join them in nurturing his to a true connection, one he could feel and breathe for the rest of his life. His partner’s troubles had distracted him – continued to do so as he stood behind him, hands stretched forward over Falon’din’s.

It was impulse and greed. It was everything she had been denied as a dreamer herself. Everything their society dictated she should have; she was one of them but they had decided she was not. Now, she held to evidence to prove they were no greater than she and the power to keep them from dragging her back to the fight.

She stole away from the secret chamber with Dirthamen’s Ma’sahn uth-an cradled to her chest. She fled through an eluvian and emerged in a forest far from the fighting. Then she took to the paths that led as far from the battles as she could until there were no more paths to guide her. Then, she simply walked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some elvish translations? Cool.  
> “Dirth’ena enasalin” means the “knowledge that led to victory” and was used to describe the arcane warrior discipline, according to the wiki.  
> “Calin’sahn” I made up completely. At the point of time this chapter is set it can be literally translated in two parts. “Calin” means “finding/finally grasping” and “sahn” means “meaning” in a spiritual sense and is often used as the word for soul (I’m sure eventually we will find out what the elvish word for soul is, but I’m sticking with this for now).  
> “Ma’sahn uth-an” is a phrase I made up with a combination of real elvish words from the wiki and one I made up. It is the elvish name for the foci the elvhen pantheon used. “Ma” is canon and means “my” in this context. “Sahn” is my own word that means “soul/meaning.” “Uth” is also canon and means “forever” in this context while “-an” was apparently used to denote a place. As such the phrase literally means “My soul[’s] forever [place].” The place is more implied than actually stated. However, a more accurate way to translate its meaning (for this fic anyway) is “the eternal rest of my soul” as it was a place that would guard an extension of the soul.  
> “Ghilan’him banal’vhen” I translated in the fic but it means “the path that leads astray” according to the dragon age wiki and was used by those who abhorred physical combat as a derogatory term for arcane warriors.  
> The second chapter will be up in around a week probably.This fic will be just under 10k words. I apologize if my style is a little weird here; I wanted it to sound different than how you would expect someone to speak. I wanted that to convey the change that has taken place in the world since but I am unsure if it has just made it confusing.


	2. The Rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were more than generals now, honoured as Legends.

They were more than generals now, honoured as Legends. The tide of war was changing fast, crashing around the Forgotten Ones as a few of them were pushed back into the void for the first time. The people she took from the generals told her this freely, despite the word “took” being more fitting than “freed.”

Some of them wanted to escape the war and destruction as she had. Others wanted to escape the society that saw them as nothing more than fodder. But more still were content to serve if it meant helping the People. They came to believe, as all she took came to understand, that the generals – the Legends, now – did not need their assistance as anything other than fodder. She showed them all the truth she had come to see in that cacophony of magic. She held aloft what was now _her_ Ma’sahn uth-an – too long departed from Dirthamen’s side to still be his – and showed them she was no different than those Legends; _they_ were no different than those Legends.

But this was a lie. Mostly she did not know this fact until ages of slumber had passed as the world changed around her. In the moment however, she was aware of only one vague untruth. Her Ma’sahn uth-an was not a holder of her soul, her existence’s very meaning. It was merely a foci of power, connected to her magic. She knew not the ritual used to create a second meaning. She was not as self-assured as the Legends, and thus she saw herself above them. Better than them. That she did not see the need to nurture a second half was her proof she was as worthy, as deserving.

But a connection she nurtured with it still, to prove she could. She gave herself over to the foci every time she slept, giving her meaning to a cage of stone rather than flesh. Magic permeated every breath of air in that time and to create a new place of meaning was possible then, even if it was never done. In the world that Solas would eventually create, one would be caged to their place of meaning for eternity barring the rarest exception – and she was no exception.

In the past, however, she nurtured this small connection and used the foci to augment her power. To allow herself to vanish fully from the view of even the most trained eye, to manipulate her steps to cross entire miles with one bound, to build a palace greater than even the halls of the council leaders – the Evanuris – in Arlathan.

The lie of “her” Ma’sahn uth-an was even greater still. She had not made it; it had been taken from Dirthamen’s throne. She learned from the first people she took, the ones higher ranking in the army which she had known well, that Dirthamen and Falon’din shared a Ma’sahn uth-an now. The foci that had been Falon’din’s was already threaded with such a concentration of Dirthamen’s magic, and with Dirthamen’s own swept from him, they had found their souls in such harmony that their souls could intertwine for eternity. Even the commoner was aware of the two’’ bond. They were called the twins, no blood binding them other than the regular amount spilled in a friendship formed at the earliest age of childhood. With the extension of their meanings merged into one soul, their own individual meanings pulled even more tightly together. Calin’sahn was told this and she found herself angry that her own Ma’sahn uth’an could never lead to such a connection. She turned her attention, in a desperation to forget, to further building and populating her palace.

In this palace she made her home, the center building and rising spire of which only she could enter. And she took people from the war and brought them to this palace so that she could help just a small few see the truth of the Legends and the death of war for themselves. She had no desire to free the elvhen people from the classes they were born to, nor to end the onslaught of war. She did not view either as possible. All she wanted was to see the disgust of such a thing existing on another face.

The first few she took she had known before she left. She knew them to be weary of battle and strong of heart. The ones that followed she took because of their meaning, their soul; her foci allowed her to see the lightning inside their hearts and brought them to somewhere that would see that as worthy enough a quality. That lightning she did not wish to see drained by war; she did not wish to see a light grow dim in the face of death.

In her palace woven through the trees of an unknown and untamed forest, they all were nobility and she wanted for nothing. She was neither alone nor lonely. The forest was abundant in wild life and resources and she could do much with her foci, wholly undisturbed by the society she had shut them away from. It was not a paradise or satisfaction that made her content here – it was a lack of ambition and emotion for anything more. In a life that was eternal, if she found herself wanting anything else she could wait to seek it for centuries if she saw fit.

Her small group grew occasionally, each bringing news of the distant civilization they all ignored. She found the new meaning of the word calin – “thief” – endlessly amusing as she had no doubt that the Legends were directly responsible for it. Sahn had always been a meaning of divine nature, but now it became explicit in its content. And it was with the realization that the Legends could shape language itself in just a few short decades because of a slight they had suffered that made her truly come to realize the direction the world was taking beyond the crystalline walls of her castle and through the green shade of the leaves.

She was standing on the outermost spire of her castle, woven around a large redwood with a long, guarded pathway back to the main entrenchment of walls among the redwoods’ branches when it happened. She looked out among the branches when she felt the quake, and she knew the war over. It brought her no relief, though she would only realize in hindsight that it was the fear of what would come to fill in its absence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is probably a good time to mention that Calin’sahn is not a “good” person by any means, though she is not a cruel one. Indifferent, more than anything. She is a very biased narrator, especially telling the story in retrospect as she is. I thought it made the story more interesting that way. It especially lends itself well to what we know about the time of Arlathan: nothing that is not either confirmed a lie or from the word of a heavily biased source. It is also why she continues to refer to the beings they fought as “the Forgotten Ones” rather than by the names that they most likely would have been known by at this point. She either knows them no longer or does not want to remember.  
> I also feel like I should point out literally everything to do with this fic I wrote because I thought “If the foci were extensions of the soul then perhaps a shared foci could explain the complicated nature of Dirthamen and Falon’din’s relationship hinted at in the ‘Twins in Shadow’ codex?” Now this fic’s word doc is over five thousand words. Why am I like this? Why couldn’t I have just made a tumblr post starting with “lol, what if?”  
> The next chapter will be up in a week once again. Check back Monday for it.


	3. Pantheon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legends only grow.

The Legends defeated the Forgotten Ones together. The nine legends all played a part, but the spell that finally banished them was Solas’s invention; he was the only living being to fight against them that once could have been considered one of them. One of the people they had been before the terror of war had erased their very names and replaced them with nothing – not even the lingering scent of death and ashes left behind. He knew their ways like no other that lived or wished to recall enough to be able to do so. Calin’sahn knew who and what they been before the war and that those people could create such death was too much. So they became nothing but unnamed to everyone’s ears, even her’s that she prided on hearing so much. The Forgotten Ones.

The Legends and their ma’sahn uth-an powered the spell of Solas’s creation, and the Forgotten Ones were banished to the void they had created in their warpath. They could expand it no longer and had no chance of ever reaching its boundaries. In time, the world shifted around it and was created anew. The Void was a realm no different than the Beyond and just as distant and unreachable.

The time it took to create this change bred many more. Most importantly, it bred power.

The Legends had not only excelled in the war, or in finally removing the Forgotten Ones as a threat, but also in the aftermath. They had rallied many of soldiers into workers, rebuilding the worst of what was lost. Many of those who fought managed to advance socially, increasing the motivation to work for them. The council of the Evanuris all but dissolved, meaningless as these new figures took up their roles without complaint. Soon, _they_ were the definition of Evanuris, forming an exclusive council that rebuild and led long after the war.

They had gone from generals, to legends, with a brief stop at Evanuris. The stop, however, was truly brief. Especially in elvhen terms of time.

They were called gods now, and she observed with a sense of utter horror, on the few occasions she ventured into their society for news and supplies, that is was true. They had strong magic on their own, dangerous power in their ma’sahn uth-an, they led the People as their Evanuris, and they were worshipped in temples with priests. What more did a god need than to guide their people, to hold power, and to be worshipped? A god was not a creature: it was an idea. They had transcended from mortals to thoughts, ideas, _beliefs_ – and at the same time it made them no different than before.

She stared up at the statues of people she had seen bleed as any other, knew were nothing more than any other elf, and anger grew in her like a disease. She returned to her palace and the hidden resting place of her ma’sahn uth-an. She took it in her hand and from that day it never left her grip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is a day late, I have a big test coming up and I've been busy studying!  
> Is it too obvious that I find the Evanuris and the concept of deities in general utterly fascinating? Well I guess I sold myself out the moment I started this fic. It has definitely evolved a lot more than I expected it to when I was scrolling through the wiki.  
> No new elvish in this chapter. Expect it up at my normal time in a week.


	4. The cause

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As ages past, the ghosts from the war faded. With them other things disappeared as well.

As ages past, the ghosts from the war faded. With them other things disappeared as well – things like the fact that the gods had once bled as soldier fell around them. The mortality of the gods was not the only thing forgotten. As the emotions of war faded, so did the memories that were keeping the nobility and decadence in check.  
Calin’sahn walked through Arlathan occasionally now – she was not as worried as she once was about someone other than the gods themselves remembering her face. She covered herself in the non-descript cloak of both the non-poor and non-rich. Beneath it she wore a gown of simple elegance. Once this outfit would have allowed her to travel through the entire city from the slums to the high streets just be shedding the cloak. With each visit she found there were more places even this versatile dress did not allow her to enter – on both ends.  
“Get out, Dreamer!” was the sneer that chased her from the worst of the slums. The area felt different than the rest of the slums. The slums were always in poor condition, built from the cheapest material and housing the poor that worked as servants – but still worked, rather than serve. The slums she was run out of seemed to barely be housing – they were storage for human cargo. Through only a glimpse inside she could hardly believe that free people lived there.  
“Freedom is a wish,” the man who ran her out spit at her feet, hair drawn beneath his mutilated ear in a loose bunch of dreadlocks. “A wish no one without money can afford. Down here is the only place we have respite from your decadence. We will not let you ruin the one place we are not used,” he sneered, but he took the time to talk to her.  
That night, she took someone for the first time since the end of war so many ages ago. She took him. For the moment though, she turned towards the upper levels of the city, built with these peoples’ lives as pillars.  
The entryway she walked freely through. She made her way through the plazas she knew well, but she did not get to see them all. The cloak was thrown back, folded in on itself so its travel-worn exterior can appear merely travel resistant. She could pass as just another one of the rich returning to her home after a journey.  
But she could no longer pass for one of the elite that she was so close to in reality. She felt eyes prick upon her just inside the entrance of the elevated terraces. The fashions around her were gaudy – some of the dresses were even enchanted to move as if they were alive or flowing water – and the people around her looked upon the simple cuts of silk and silver threaded along the flows of her muscles as if she were a slave walking among them dressed in mud. She saw one or two people eye her like they were expecting trouble and she had to turn and leave before she drew too much attention. The gods were not ones to turn aside slights. Even if most people would not know her it was not a risk she could take.  
She retreated to her palace for a few short, short hours but the emotions in her twisted. The city was beautiful everywhere but the lowest slums. Even the poor lived in conditions that were clean enough, if not picturesque like the rest of the city’s spires. How the slums had become the separate, decrepit thing, parts of it tunneled into the ground like warrens as populations and poverty grew after the war was a slow change that she was not present to see. How society had polarized so that the richest dressed in clothing enchanted from molten gold was a concept she could not grasp. She thought of the woman she saw wearing pendant earrings with teardrops of pure, crystalline lyrium, and she saw red.  
She flew back to the city in a rage, emotions flaring stronger than they had in years. She stalked the streets cloaked in shadows with her ma’sahn uth-an at her side. She found the man’s home, the one with the dreadlock ponytail, and she lifted him from where he slept, using magic to insure he did not yet wake.  
She took him back to the palace, laid him in the most exquisite room she had that was not her own – one she had refrained from giving in a show of favoritism. Then she took the news of her new arrival to the other inhabitants of the palace.  
When he woke, he was in a fury. He spat and he cursed and he made to hit anyone that drew close, even as he ran through the palace to find those responsible. The ghosts of war may have faded from society, but those in the palace who had resisted the urge to fall into Uthenera to escape the death of the time remembered it well enough; there were no other great events to overwrite those memories. Here, they were suspended, unchanging, unaffected. Here, the Forgotten Ones were still remembered as the greatest threat to the world. The fear in the man’s eyes at waking somewhere that he did not know – or that was simply so decadent – was the living proof before them that a new threat had arisen even as it promised peace. The soldiers in the palace, for that was what they were still, may not have known how to deal with the man, but they knew how to avoid inciting his anger or fueling his fear. And calmly, they pointed him to where she sat in a spire, looking out across the forest around her.  
“What am I doing here?” he asked her back. She could tell he did not enter the room fully, too cautious to pen himself in with her. She turned where she sat, letting him see her. His jaw tightened, nostrils flaring as he turned his head away from her gaze. It was an act of defiance – she recognizes it from all the times she had not been allowed to make it herself in the face of the dreamers. “The women who thought she had a right to our home,” he recognized. “Do you think you have a right to us, too?”  
She spoke to him calmly, told him she had escaped and was giving him a chance to do so too. That he would be as nobility in this palace – that he would lounge in luxury. She introduced the beginning carefully, wanting him to know she was not one of the dreamers forcing him to slavery. At first it was okay, but then his anger flared unexpectedly.  
“You expect me to lounge here, ignoring all the strife of my family and friends, as the dreamers I hate do? Do you pretend that is moral?” he demanded, raising himself up and gesturing angrily at the palace walls around him.  
She stared at him, wondering if this was what shock was supposed to feel like – it had been too long since the war had stripped her to numbness for her to truly know emotions when she was inconvenienced with them. “No, I do not,” she finally replied. The best that could be said for his reaction was that her words did not agitate him further. “But it is what I have earned from a life of death and service in war. What we have all earned.”  
He looked her in the eye and sneered. The anger that flared inside her at the action was an emotion she wholly recognized – one of the few she felt on a regular basis now.  
“You are all survivors of the Great War, aren’t you? You have hidden yourself for all the ages since,” he said, words not spat but a close thing. The anger inside her boiled like molten metal at his youthful disrespect for the destruction they had suffered, but she thinned her mouth to a line and nodded. He shook his head, turning to look out at the woods rather than have to look at her face any longer – it seemed to disgust him.  
“You have been so buried in your own self-pity you have neglected all the horrors that have been forced upon your people as you wallowed. You disrespect yourselves and your kin,” he said, and this time there was no question that the words were spat.  
She stared for several long minutes, hands shaking at her sides and her left arm pressing tightly against the foci on her belt. Eventually, the blackness that had crept over her vision in rage subsided to a gray haze at the edge of her vision. He still stood there, staring defiantly, proudly into the forest. He expected her to rise to his slander, to force a confrontation that would either free him of this place – one way or another – or prove her just as low as the people she claimed to have saved him from – the people that had abused him so.  
She clenched her fists and turned away from him, sitting herself back upon the bench where she had been resting before he came to her.  
“You are free to go everywhere except the rooms of the others here and my spire. The uthenera chambers are also to be left undisturbed. You may spend your time as you like. Whether you wish to do nothing or work is up to you. Many of us enjoy hunting in the forest and collecting resources from it. We are beyond the reach of any road or building here. We are safe.”  
He said nothing for a long stretch. She wondered if this would be a moment where days passed between exchanges of words; they often took years to hold conversations here in the palace, but those in the slums had always acted on a faster clock than others.  
Eventually he spoke. “You are isolated here,” he responded, footsteps signaling his turn to leave the room. “And a freedom someone else chose for you is no freedom at all. Dirthara-ma,” he added before his footsteps faded down the hallway.  
After that day she rarely spoke to him. He resented her, but he spoke to the others for no reason other than loneliness. It took him years to adjust to the pace of life within the palace halls and he often grew angry with impatience during conversations and walked away. He would avoid them for days before his own emotions forced him to seek contact out again. He would repeat the process whenever he argued about their isolated existed, often ending an argument by storming away and shouting “Ma banal las halamshir var vhen!” with a tremor in his voice.  
Though she ignored his outbursts and emotion for the most part, it was from him that she learned critical information.  
There were what he called her people – rich, powerful dreamers who paid no care to those they deemed beneath them – and there were his People – the elves that knew hardship, that suffered through work and servitude and thus knew what life was truly like. She did not tell him that she had been one of his People and it was why she was here now.  
If she said it, she would acknowledge she had changed. She would acknowledge she was one of them now. The worst part, she realized, was that she cared for no reason other than that she despised the people she was being thrown in with. She did not care that she was not drastically different from them – she did not consider herself so, and what else mattered but that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one got away from me a bit. The last two had no actual scenes in them, just exposition, and I felt the need to further the character – if not her awareness – a little for the wave that is about to come. That made this one run pretty long but I felt like it was some situational backdrop that needed to be done before chapter 5.  
> “Dirthara-ma” is a canon curse that translates to “may you learn.”  
> “Ma banal las halamshir var vhen” is canon as well and translates as “You do nothing to further our people.”  
> Speaking of the forgotten ones: I know that it is said that Fen’Harel could walk freely between the Forgotten Ones and the gods. I painted them almost exclusively as the enemy in this fic but I found the war that led to the Evanuris’ crowning seemed to be more of a civil war than anything else. As such I rather thought the Forgotten Ones were a group that Solas used to be, let’s say a part time member of, before the war and that he mostly banished them himself to prove his “loyalty” after the war, thus feeding into the legends he imprisoned both the Evanuris and the Forgotten Ones, just not at the same time.  
> Chapter five, “Solas”, will be posted in a week.


	5. Solas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas was a dreamer, more powerful than even some of the other gods.

Most of the gods were Evanuris before the Great War. The highest of nobility, members of the leading council that decided the direction of the elvhen people as a whole and wrote the laws that governed them. Some of them were merely high-ranking Dreamers, elevated by their role in the war until they became generals by their own merits rather than birth-given rights. Solas was the only one who had not been part of upper society before he rose to power.

Solas was a dreamer, more powerful than even some of the other gods. He was a mage as skilled as his fellow eight, and a warrior more battle-tested than others before the beginning of the war. He had emerged from unknown obscurity, proudful and ready to show the worth his words claimed and through both traits he rose to become a general.

There were generals in the war other than the nine; they fell as the war raged on. There were many Evanuris before the war; they died in it or became mere nobility after the war. There should have been two hundred of Evanuris after the war, still holding seats or newly appointed to fill the blood-given vacancies; there were only nine.

Evanuris came to mean something new after the war: revered leader. Exalted one. Divinity. _God_.

Solas became an Evanuris after the war for a short time, when it only meant revered leader. Shortly after it came to mean exalted one, he left in disgust. He never experienced the other meanings. His pride at being above treating people the way the Evanuris did blinded him into departure; he did not see that if he stayed he could have steered the Evanuris true. He could have prevented the death of their empire.

He vanished. Not quite into obscurity, but close enough. He was as much an enigma then as he was to Calin’sahn back when she saw him with her own eyes on the battlefield regularly. She had always seen him as a kin to herself until the revelation that led to her departure; after that she saw him as nothing more than a man who truly lived up to his name. He had been known as Na’fen sometimes back then. The wolf. His form had been strong and endured many battles – the art of summoning it was a rare one that eventually only the Evanuris seemed to know.

When Calin’sahn first heard whisperings of the Dread Wolf, first came to know it was him, she came to wonder if her first assessment of him may have been more correct.

As the elvhen empire fell around her, she realized she had been right the second time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elvish translations! We all know “fen” is “wolf” by now. But “na” I invented to be “the” or “this.”  
> One chapter left, dealing with fallout and Calin’sahn’s ultimate fate. It will be up in a week.  
> … I didn’t tag this with happy ending, did I?


	6. Epilogue

Sleep was something that she needed occasionally. She took to it more regularly than she remembered most used to; society had changed enough around her she could not be sure if her frequency was still greater than most now. She did it because she had the luxury now that she had not been afforded in the war and she did it because it both strengthened her Ma’sahn uth-an’s power and her connection to it. When she slept she gave herself over to it, nestling in a home of stone rather than flesh. Part of her wondered if the stone sahn uth’an was responsible for her dulled emotions, but the rest languished in the luxury that resting inside provided. Most of her thought her emotions – her ability to care about others more than superficially – was just another thing that had been consumed by the destruction of the war.

During the height of the rebellion, the clashing battles of magic, gods, and slaves rising like her palace’s newest addition so often argued for, she spent much energy and time gathering information. Things were happening quickly again for the first time since the war; years could not be spent in debate or battles and upheavals would be missed. Expending so much energy – magical cloaking to hide her form a thing she was long practiced at but that still took power – meant she had to rest more often. It was chance that she was resting inside the foci that night, but it was not a small one.

She was inside when Solas cast the Veil across existence, and she pushed at the stone to let her understand, to let her _go_. But the world had become a wholly different one than that in which she had lived. Within the stone she was as aware as in flesh, but she lacked the physicality of being able to do anything. She felt magic draining away and she reached out with greedy need toward it. It was ice melted, waves of power crashing around her but slipping out of reach as they passed. Still, much of it she pulled within herself as it passed over her. It was only possible because of the foci she now resided within. Magic drained away faster than anything she had experienced – faster even than battle. Mere rivulets were left behind, dregs at the bottom of a dried river that had once flowed from a great ocean. The most infuriating part came with time; eventually she was able to feel the tidal wave of magic held back behind the Veil, teasing her with the power to break from her cage.

Her suspicion that the foci had been what drained her was proved wrong as ages past. It was not the stone that had drained her of feeling, or even war. It had been time. As years past – for time could no longer be measured in ages – she fought less and less against her prison. Her curses for the gods eventually ran as dry as the magic around her had. In some ways she saw herself lucky – she watched from the windows of her spire as her fellow inhabitants perished, now the victims of time. In her body of stone she endured, dulled and growing sleepier with each century, but alive in the barest sense.

Inside she felt din. _Emma him banal_. She watched with disinterest as her palace crumbled, its isolation and wards ensuring the only thing that encroached on it was wilderness, but lack of magic and time bringing most of it crashing to the forest floor from the branches. Most of the rooms and buildings sunk into the forest floor and wildlife with time but her spire, taller and more heavily warded than the rest, remained mostly upright and above the dirt. One side of windows showed it was now propped against a tree, dust and vines encircling it.

After decades and centuries passed, she faded to an approximation of slumber – the true thing was no longer an option. She slipped into a daze where nothing felt truly real. How could it, with no body to feel?

She was awakened by a crack of magic, rippling through the Veil as far across the continent the Breach ripped through the Veil. She struggled to pull her mind from the cobwebs of centuries as her mind reeled at the feeling of so much magic so close. Cautiously, tenuously, she reached her own magic for it, pulling at the tidal wave at the end of fingertips she no longer possessed.

The Breach slipped away, the Veil cracked and leaking but no longer ripped asunder. She felt herself reeling, angry at her missed chance. For the first time since before the Veil was cast she felt true waves of emotions rolling through her, emotions giving her the fire to quicken her mind to the pace of this new world.

Somehow, the Breach ripped open again. She reached out, magic extending beyond the bones of the body she had once held that was now long decayed to nothing but a dusty white skeleton. With all the magic she had managed to pull inside before it vanished, she grabbed for the crack in the sky. She would not miss her chance once more. She knew that it was unlikely she would ever get one again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s get the translations out of the way: “Din” is canon and literally translates to “isn’t” but actually means someone who has died (someone who “is not”). “Emma him banal” is also made of canon words but is not a phrase that appears in canon. It means “I have become nothing” (actually, it translates “I am become nothing” but it’s the closest I could get with the limited words we know).
> 
> So, um, cliffhanger I guess? I thought that this could give rise to a much longer fic if I had the inspiration. I honestly could leave it here, because this fic was really only supposed to be about her stealing the foci and the society of ancient Arlathan, but I also have some thoughts of what could become of Calin’sahn – or at least what could become of the foci she now resides in. If you would like to read a – most likely much longer – sequel to this then leave a comment and let me know. Also feel free to let me know if there is anything you might be particularly interested in seeing.
> 
> Thanks for reading all of my ridiculous indulgent writing about ancient elves! I just like them a lot okay


End file.
